Saturday, 20 August 2011

Cataloging Human Power Armor in 15mm

Matt's previous posts (Alien Life Forms and Non-Biological Life) have sparked some great discussions. To continue this series, we will now examine the various forms of human Power Armor available in 15mm Sci Fi.

Starting with some of the oldest sculpts still available:

15mm.Co.Uk has a great assortment in the Laserburn ranges. The Imperial Troopers were an early predecessor of GW Space Marines, but are just the slightest bit small compared to some newer infantry lines. The Power Armor and Dreadnought minis still stand up very well, as does the Dreadnought mini in the Red Redemptionists range(pictured to the right).

Those are all classic minis - lots of character and sentimental value for many 15mm gamers. But if you want something designed by our current crop of manufacturers:

Ground Zero Games has Power Armor packs for the NAC, NSL, FSE, ESU, and Japanese factions. While GZG's newer ranges (NAC, UNSC, New Israelis) are exceedingly popular, the old Power Armor packs should never be overlooked. The Japanese pack(pictured on the left) may be especially appealing to sci-fantasy gamers, as it contains a mini holding two power swords. All of the GZG Power Armor packs are also available from Eureka Miniatures Australia.

15mm.Co.Uk has the Retained Knights in the HOF range. These are a very suitable 15mm proxy for GW Space Marines, especially with a variety of both heavy weapon and close combat troopers.

Kremlin Miniatures has the Red Banner MANITOU minis. These large figures look great alongside even the newest infantry sculpts on today's 15mm market.

But we all know that the 15mm Sci-Fi renaissance has really only existed for the last few years. The manufacturers driving this product boom have produced some of the best Power Armor available:

Khurasan's Federal Marine Special Assault Brigade (pictured right). These are textbook examples of the power armor described by Heinlein. They are also multi-part miniatures, meaning you can build dozens of them with unique poses and weapon configurations. Lots of spare parts in this pack, too.

Blue Moon Manufacturing released the Orion Republic troops, and it seems that these are their most popular sci-fi minis. There are ten unique poses in the pack, so combining a few packs together would allow you some variety in your squads. This pack also contains a bare-headed command figure - something that may be very appealing to fans of the WH40K aesthetic.

Critical Mass Games'ARC Fleet Drop Troopers and Augments have a very good variety of weapons and poses.

There are even more Power Armor troopers coming in the future.

Ground Zero Games has announced plans to eventually update all of the "older" factions. Matt's previous interview with Jon T. (see here) included a preview of the revised NAC Power Armor.

15mm.Co.Uk Retained Knights are perfect representations of the classic Warhammer 40k Space marines, remember that the original 25mm miniatures were sculpted by Bob Olley way back in the day, the 15mm variants would look great as the earliest Horus Heresy Space marines or if you like file down the helmet nose cones and then your have Space marines wearing the latest MK-6 or is it 7 armour, perfect for playing the new 2.0 version of "In the Emperor's name."

Although I’ve said that the 15mm.Co.Uk Retained Knights are good they would not be my first personal choice, the best looking 15mm power armour in the miniature market at the moment has to be Blue Moon’s Orion Republic Heavy Infantry. These miniatures are full of character and each squad member is a different cast so there are no duplicate miniatures in the squad of ten men, they are generic enough to fit in with most Sci-fi backgrounds which make them very useful miniatures to own. I plan to do a few mods to mine especially the heavy SAW's gunner with his bipod mounted weapon, i plan to add a hydrolic boom arm to surport his weapon instead of the rather long looking bipod.